Toilets and certain other plumbing fixtures are usually situated over an opening in a floor into which the upper end of a drain pip extends. A ring fitting at the base of the toilet serves the dual purposes of securing the toilet to the floor and coupling the waste discharge passage of the toilet to the drain pipe.
In the more or less standardized construction, the ring fitting includes a cylindrical sleeve element which engages on the upper end of the drain pipe and a coaxial ring element disposed against the floor around the drain opening and having an inner edge which extends under a flange formed on the upper end of the sleeve. Passages are provided in the ring element for screws or the like which secure the fitting to the floor and for bolts or the like which extend upwardly to secure the base of the toilet to the fitting. In modern ring fittings of this kind, the sleeve element is typically formed of plastic which can be bonded to a plastic drain pipe with solvents to provide a sealed, positive connection between the fitting and drain pipe. The ring element is typically metal to provide a high strength fastening of the toilet to the floor.
Bonding of the sleeve element to the drain pipe may occur very quickly and thereafter the ring fitting cannot be turned as a unit in order to bring the bolt holes of the fitting into precise alignment with those of the toilet itself. To enable such alignment without disrupting the bonding of the sleeve to the drain pipe, the ring element is not rigidly fastened to the sleeve and can be rotated until such time as it is screwed to the floor.
Some prior constructions provide for such rotation by employing ring and sleeve elements that are not directly attached to each other in any manner. The two elements are separable. Such separability is advantageous in certain respects as it enables a particular ring element to be matched with a selected one of a number of sleeves of different length and configurations as the requirements of a particular job might dictate. However, the above described construction does not inherently maintain the sleeve and ring elements in a strictly coaxial relationship with each other. Consequently, installation may become difficult and subject to error, particularly if the drain pipe is slightly mispositioned as is a common occurrence, as the sleeve may tend to move out of precisely coaxial relationship with the ring as it bonds to the drain pipe.
Such installation problems are avoided by another prior construction in which the ring and sleeve elements are permanently joined together while still being relatively rotatable. The inner edge of the ring extends into a groove on the outer surface of the sleeve defined by the flange at the upper end of the sleeve and outward extending projections on the sleeve immediately below the ring. This maintains the sleeve and ring elements in strict coaxiality but the construction is also disadvantageous in certain respects. It is not possible to replace the sleeve with one of a different length or configuration when conditions at a particular job site make that desirable.
A construction which enables interchanging of a variety of sleeve elements at a particular ring element while also acting to inherently maintain the two elements in optimum alignment during installation would be very advantageous.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems discussed above.